Day 207

(For Refaat Alareer and  his family)


Stench in the streets of rotting garbage, bodies
decayed beyond recognition
I am thinking now of a field of strawberries
I am thinking of a young woman picking strawberries
with her father   She is three months pregnant
with her first child, his first grandchild.
The sun is hot, it’s August, the air saturated
with the fragrance of ripe strawberries
Their arms stained with red juice
They gather strawberries for this brother, that sister,
grandmother, friend    It seems
there is no end to the strawberries or the people
they will be given to
They walk until they’re too hot, too tired
The father takes his daughter’s hand, tenderly
wipes her arm with a cloth he takes from his pocket
Red juice, red-stained cloth   They cannot know
that in four months the father will be murdered
In six months the daughter will give birth to a baby boy
who, too, will be murdered in eight months
along with his mother, his own father
Just when the new season’s strawberries
are beginning to grow, before the child
ever knows their taste, fragrance of them
in the mild spring despite everything